Anchorage man charged with murder

ANCHORAGE (AP) -- A man suspected in one of a string of slayings of Native women was being held on $1 million bail after being charged with first-degree murder.

Joshua Allen Wade, 20, was taken into custody without incident Saturday and charged in the slaying of Della Brown, police said.

Brown, whose body was found inside a shed in Spenard on Sept. 2, is one of six women whose unsolved slayings over the past 16 months prompted police administrators to assign seven extra investigators to the cases.

Police said they have information linking Wade to other recent killings of Anchorage women. Police Lt. Mark Marsh, who oversees the major crimes unit, would not say what that information is.

Marsh said Anchorage Crime Stoppers, a phone line that provides tips to police, received about half a dozen calls within the past week about Brown's killing.

The callers said ''that Josh is talking about having committed that murder,'' Marsh said. Investigators think Wade and Brown were strangers.

Police got a tip shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday that Wade was in an east Anchorage apartment. Officers surrounded the building and phoned Wade inside, telling him to surrender. Wade complied.

Brown was the most recent victim in a string of six slayings of Anchorage women, five of whom were Natives. Discovery of her body in a shed near 32nd Avenue and Dorbrandt Street galvanized fear that someone is stalking Native women.

Police don't know whether the homicides are the work of one person, but officers are looking at the possibility that they are connected.